Any­one who’s ever had the mis­for­tune of a con­ver­sa­tion about movies with this Dork Reporter is no doubt aware that I like musi­cals about as much as I like biopics. That is to say, not very much. I do, how­ever, love Tim Bur­ton, and count Ed Wood among my per­sonal favorite films. So if he could make a biopic I can love, I didn’t think it unre­al­is­tic to hope that he might melt my cranky moviewatcher’s heart with a musi­cal. But it’s been a long time since Bur­ton has directed a per­sonal project, instead work­ing on exist­ing fran­chises and remakes like Planet of the Apes and Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­tory. He did add a healthy dose of the trade­mark Bur­ton fla­vor to each, not to men­tion key mem­bers of his troupe (Helena Bon­ham Carter in Apes and Johnny Depp in Char­lie), but fans like myself are still wait­ing for the next burst of pure Bur­ton mad­ness in the spirit of Edward Scissorhands.

Oi t’ink he’s up to summat

The Sweeny Todd tale orig­i­nated in a prose ser­ial form in 1846, and after sev­eral per­mu­ta­tions, even­tu­ally became a stage musi­cal by Stephen Sond­heim in 1979. Burton’s 2007 film adap­ta­tion doesn’t quite man­age to break free of its stage­bound, er, stag­ing. Despite the oppor­tu­nity a film has to expand a play’s world, the action is lim­ited to just a few loca­tions. The rich art direc­tion doesn’t defeat the impres­sion that the whole thing was shot on a small sound­stage. Speak­ing of art direc­tion, Burton’s vision of late 19^th cen­tury Lon­don is very col­or­ful, pro­vided that that color is blue. That said, it isn’t long before a few gen­er­ous gal­lons of red are splashed about the place.

And now, the chew­ing of scenery, for your delight & edification

Tim­o­thy Spall, once of Mike Leigh’s British kitchen sink dra­mas, con­tin­ues to indulge in the new scenery-chewing per­sona he devel­oped as Peter Pet­ti­grew in the Harry Pot­ter films. Helena Bon­ham Carter looks like she just stepped out of The Night­mare Before Christ­mas, and Sascha Baron Cohen sports no less than two out­ra­geous accents.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Bar­ber of Fleet Street joined Wait­ress in the most unlikely mini genre of 2007: movies about pie shops. But while Wait­ress was a largely cutesy con­coc­tion, Sweeney Todd adds to the recipe a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with venge­ful can­ni­bal­ism à la The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover.

And finally, a tech­ni­cal note: the DVD edi­tion suf­fers from an unusu­ally uneven audio mix. The music is far, far louder than dia­logue sequences, so be pre­pared to drive your remote con­trol vol­ume switch throughout.

Offi­cial movie site: www.sweeneytoddmovie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

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